Tag: H&M

IKEA today opens up its first India store in Hyderabad City. The Swedish furniture retail giant continues to be ranked the most valuable Swedish brand according to an annual survey by the brand valuation and strategy consultancy Brand Finance. In a new report listing the top 50 brands in Sweden, IKEA holds the number 1 position in terms of brand value, followed by H&M and Nordea.

“IKEA’s brand value dropped 5% over the last year to SEK197.1 billion, as the brand faces many of the same issues as other conventional retailers, especially increasing global competition from online-only sellers and digital home-improvement offerings.”

The top 10 list remains intact from 2017 but there are significant changes in value among the leading brands. For example, Nordea is the only brand among the top 6 that actually sees an increase in value, up 7% according to the metrics used in the report.

Top 10 most valuable Swedish brands:

IKEA (-5%)

H&M (-7%)

Nordea (+7%)

Ericsson (-15%)

Telia Company (-12%)

Volvo (-7%)

Swedbank (+7%)

Handelsbanken (+3%)

SEB (+6%)

Skanska (+7%)

Among the losers on the list is for example forestry and paper giant SCA which drops from number 18 to 38, with an estimated drop in brand value of 86%. The highest new entry on top 50 is hygiene and health company Essity which enters the list at number 20. The explanation for this dramatic shift (which the report fails to mention) is of course that SCA in 2017 split its business into two different brands: SCA and Essity.

The fastest growing brand is the e-casino B2B provider Evolution Gaming which increased its value by 82%.

The Ignite Social Media Blog tracks the most popular branded pages on Facebook. In the September update, two Swedish brands are ranked among the top 50 pages. With 8.3 million “fans”, H&M moves up one spot to #32 and Sony Ericsson stays at #50 (with 5.7 million).

Swedish brands on Twitter are getting more and more followers. Now there are more than 100 brands or businesses that have 1,000 followers or more, (currently 103 accounts). In January 2011, only 60 accounts had that many followers. Some of them, like H&M, are growing with amazing speed, adding about 70,000 new followers per month to its main corporate account (H&M also have several local accounts).

The top 10 Swedish brands on Twitter in terms of number of followers, are (as of Aug 25, 2011, compared to May 3):

Many brands are considering whether they should have an active presence on Twitter, or not. During the last few years, I have collected close to 500 corporate accounts on my list of Swedish business on Twitter. This list, of course, does not cover all existing corporate accounts, but it is still quite extensive.

About four months ago, I looked at how the top brands, in terms of numbers of followers and Klout score, for example, behaved on Twitter. In January, the list had 350 corporate accounts, now it consists of 471 accounts. You can find my short report from January 2011 on this topic on Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/kullin/swedish-businesses-on-twitter. Today I am publishing a quick follow up to that report and what is striking is that the top brands are gaining new followers at a very high rate. The 10 accounts with most followers have on average increased the number of followers by 41% in just four months.

The top 10 Swedish brands on Twitter in terms of number of followers, are (as of May 3, 2011):

As you can see, brands like H&M are growing their following very fast, +119% in just four months is quite impressive. The top ten are also exactly the same as four months ago, with only one shift in ranking, Propellerhead has climbed from number 10 to number 8.

In January, 60 accounts had more than 1,000 followers. Now, there are 91 accounts with more than 1,000 followers, with a total of 604,000 followers.

Klout score
Spotify is the Twitter account with the highest Klout score: 72. One interesting new entry on the the list of highest Klout scores is the fairly new account by Hilton Stockholm hotel @HiltonStockholm. The Hilton has only been active since November 2010 but has managed to create content that is being spread across Twitter. The account only has 134 followers, but a Klout score of 60, which is quite high. Klout explains this a little: “Hilton Stockholm has a small but tightly formed network that is highly engaged”.

So businesses and brands that are thinking about using Twitter for marketing or customer service should take note, this is a channel that is growing quickly in importance. Consumers and other stakeholders are happy to follow brands on Twitter and along with Facebook this might be the quickest way to build new and lasting relationships with customers, prospects and other influential people online. What are you waiting for?

Disclaimer: there may of course be accounts that I have missed that would make the top ten list.

Spotify, the digital music service, just reached 100,000 followers on Twitter. That makes it the second Swedish brand to reach that milestone, after H&M (in March 2011). In fact, probably also the second Nordic brand, since I know of no other corporate Twitter accounts from the Nordic countries that has that many followers. Nokia is a strong contender, but the Finnish company is currently at 76,000 followers.